Burst Pipe Causes Surprise Flooding

On the morning of November 5th, there was a special surprise coming from a pipe in Jenny Cooper, Director of Environmental Education and Sustainability’s, office. First noticed by students in the main hall, one of the college counseling offices had water dripping down from the ceiling. As some gathered around the spillage and others ran upstairs to see where it was coming from. I, a lowly senior, decided to investigate further. First, I went to visit Kevin Alexander, the Dean of Students, as I was told that the flooding came from his office, but this was not the case. Kevin said, “Jenny had a model glacier that melted.  The lengths that she will go to so we can understand the perils of global warming.” With this conclusion, the mystery was solved. I let out a sigh of relief, as I felt that climate change was a worthy cause. After all, who needs a dry office when the world is at stake?

However, in reality, a radiator pipe broke in Jenny’s office. Although normally the radiator caps Northwest uses are made from metal, this one, unfortunately, was made of plastic. Anyone worried for the wellbeing, and office, of our beloved Dean of Students, rest assured. He stated that “It’s been a bit musty in here, but we have had a great response from our maintenance team with dehumidifiers and fans.” Jenny Cooper clarified with further detail that “eighty percent of the leak was in my office, with a tiny bit in Kevin’s, Erin Miller’s, and the stairs leading down to the maintenance shop.”

Chance Koehnen, Northwest’s Maintenance Director, explained the problem: “We were working on the boilers down in the basement. Because of the adjustments we were making, water pressure created an air bubble inside of our heating system that caused a valve cap to burst open.” However, he reassured, “we’ve started a project where we are revisiting every single heater in the school to make sure that there are no more plastic caps and are replacing them with metal ones if we find any.” Chance’s words of consolation give us hope that we are, finally, reducing our plastic usage, and that there will not be any more “flash” floods at Northwest – at least for the time being.